The case for public transit in the US would be strengthened if it weren't used largely as a vehicle for money laundering public funds into private funds. Another problem is that security tends to be poorly enforced, the last time I rode a public train there was a knife fight in our car over some ear-splitting gang music being played on the wrong turf (lol, literally the turf the train happened to be passing through at that moment as it passed momentarily from a latino to black neighborhood) which did not even alarm most the passengers.

Normal people don't want to ride on a vehicle used for turf wars, robbery getaway express, and as a homeless sleeping center. Normal people are alarmed when ear-splitting rap music is being played provocatively, normal people get alarmed when lethal weapons are pulled out for immediate use in a crowded box. An occasion before that, a schizophrenic person tried to corner me in the back of a train car while going on an increasingly aggressive rant about how the government is out to get us.

And this would bother me even less if I weren't disarmed, because of course it was illegal for me to carry a gun or knife to protect myself from the literal knife fights surrounding me on the train. I presume anyone poor enough to need public transit with half a brain in that town bought, borrowed, or stole a bicycle.